2008-11-09

Words schmeckt

There are all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems, love-letters, novels and stories it seems. They whip out their Sharpies and take away and add apostrophes from public signs, shake their heads at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and misspellings, but do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with joy at language? Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss? Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it? Do they use language to seduce, charm, excite, please, affirm and tickle those they talk to? Do they? I doubt it. They’re too farting busy sneering at a greengrocer’s less than perfect use of the apostrophe. Well sod them to Hades. They think they’re guardians of language. They’re no more guardians of language than the Kennel Club is the guardian of dogkind.

I notice that I am still tentative about right-clicking links. I grew semi-accustomed to Firefox occasionally crashed once upon a time when I did it. And now I am trained to feel apprehensive during the act. The same thing had happened with my laptop and my University's library's old book detectors at the door. It would variably set them off and irk me, and I would have to come and prove that it was indeed nothing more than my provocative laptop. It took me months to release the apprehension a year of alarming suspicion had taught me then.